New music: Squarepusher, Dan Deacon & Phase Fatale

The rotted wasteland of January surrounds us, and not even our finest waterproof knickers can insulate us from the cold sludge of a British winter.

What you need is some new music to bring some soft candlelight to your endless darkness. Here are three January 2020 releases worth your attention.

Squarepusher – Be Up A Hello (Warp Records)

In recent years, Squarepusher has,in the parlance of modern slang, "gone off on one". His Shobaleader One project turned him into a kind of bezerker Cylon. He jammed with Japanese robots and produced an ambient soundtrack with Olivia Colman, which sounds like the kind of nonsense I'd make up, but it's true.

This was all brilliant, but now ole Squiggleplops is back to more familiar territory with a studio album that follows up 2015's Damogen Furies. He's moved away from the extreme digitalism of his recent work, and has instead opted to use a bunch of old gear. I wonder how old. Maybe we're talking lutes and harpsichords and the jangle of jester bells.

Actually, I've had Be Up A Hello on repeat for a few weeks now. I would give you my opinion, but my lips are contractually sealed. For now.

Dan Deacon – Mystic Familiar (Domino Records) 

Speaking of following up 2015 albums, it's nice to see the return of Dan Deacon, eccentric knob-twiddler and Sigur Ros collaborator. A long time ago, I boldly - and prematurely - declared that Dan Deacon had the best album of the year. In that blog post, I bang on about his similarity to Animal Collective, and that's a comparison that I suspect will hold up on Mystic Familiar.

With this album, he seems to be obsessed with "familiars" which are magical creatures that follow you around. That could include rats or cats or badgers or five-legged elephants or hedgehogs made of toenails or a panda reading a Thomas Pynchon novel.

If Dan Deacon was a season, he'd be summer, or maybe a late spring that feels like a summer. Which leads me on to...

Phase Fatale – Scanning Backwards (Ostgut Ton)

Never mind all that summer nonsense. Scanning Backwards is beyond the four seasons: this is post-nuclear fallout when the skies shimmer with unearthly light. This second album of pumping Berghain techno from Berlin's Phase Fatale will please those of you that want aerobic techno shuddering with mantle-deep bass rhythms.

He's promised "brain-penetrating instrumentation", which means when you tear the cellophane off the vinyl, a bassoon leaps onto your face and jabs your forehead with a whisk.

Here are bits of two of the above albums. Happy listening.





Further Fats: Ultra-funkulent new band from Squarepusher (2010)

Massive Attack got soul but Ceephax got swing(ing lampshades)

Hey, look, there is some albums what just come out!

Ceephax Acid Crew

I'm swinging from the bloody lightshade.

United Acid Emirates, the new album from Ceephax Acid Crew, has got me prancing around my mansion like a brain damaged pixie. It's so lurid and colourful, like being stuck in an 8 bit Meg And Mog cartoon.

The drooling, looping trippiness of the acid, splattered all over this album, is a constant, giddy joy. The opener Cedric's Sonnet is a sharp, spikey melodic number reminiscent of his brother Squarepusher in Welcome To Europe mode. Castilian is dragged kicking and screaming by a full-on, bullying bass drum, while the dated click rhythm of Life Funk reminds me of Felix-era house music.

This is, however, not a stupid album. It's a serious step forward for Ceephax, where he demonstrates his various skills at chugging 80s techno anthems (Topaz) or off-kilter chord arrangements (Commuter). And all this with plenty of squelching acid moistness. Highly recommended.

Massive Attack

Are you bothered about a new Massive Attack album?  Of course you are: I can't believe you asked me that, you idiot.

Heligoland has finally, um, landed. It's a full seven years after the band's previous studio album ("If a thing's worth doing, it's worth doing slowly," says their MySpace page) and nearly 20 years after their highly influential debut Blue Lines. And actually, it's that memory of Blue Lines that I can hear on Heligoland.

Yes, there are guest vocalists (which The Guardian had down as almost unique in the dance world, despite the Gorillaz, Fatboy Slim and Unkle doing that kind of thing for years). Yes, there is gloominess a-plenty. But what this has, which I think 100th Window missed, is... capital letters... SOUL.

It's an album that is destined for coffee tables, new year's parties and easy headlines about the vocal collaborators (hello, Guy Garvey), and therefore many serious music fans will brush it off their shrugged shoulders. Which is a shame.

What will really get me all excited are those Burial remixes the internet's been promising.

Pantha Du Prince

Also out this month is Pantha Du Prince's Black Noise. Oh, and look, he has vocal collaborations from the likes of Animal Collective, !!! and LCD Soundsystem people. Read this and weep, The Guardian.

Black Noise is awash with clouds. You know how some albums sound urban-y and some sound outdoors-y? This is Heidi the goat-herder's friend flatlining on heroin on the highest mountain in the world while buzzards perform a jagged dance of death around her.

With sharp techno, dizzying loops, spiralling bells and smoky, smoky atmospherics, this will appeal to Susumu Yokota fans looking to grab something a bit more substantial by the goat horns.

Girls! Arse! Drink! Veckatimest!

Do watch the video for my favourite song of the moment, Two Weeks. This dazzling piece was masterfully directed by Patrick Daughters, who also did Feist's annoying but watchable 1234. It was pointed out to me by the absolutely smashing chap and Greenroom exhibition co-conspirator Heroes Of Lego.

Every day I bathe in electronica. I shampoo with bleeps and glitches. I rub analogue ambience into my scalp because I'm worth it.

So when this month's big new Warp Records release is from -- shock -- a guitar band like Grizzly Bear, my skin goes wrinkly and my bubble bath goes flat.

But, actually, I don't mind Grizzly Bear's new LP Veckatimest (mentioned previously on this blog here), from which Two Weeks was taken. In fact, I'm thinking of using this instead of my usual conditioner.

Veckitamest shimmers with melody. It cuts reverberating arcs from simple sun-drenched songs to psychedelia-infused experimentalism. It is, quite simply, the best album to buy right now if you like Animal Collective and Panda Bear.

The video, incidentally, uses no special effects. Grizzly Bear glow from within like human fridges. It's a pretty cool party trick, although the hum gets annoying after a while.

The best album of 2009 is Dan Deacon's Bromst. Here's why...

Edit, December 2009: The best album of 2009 is not Bromst. Yeah, I know, I'm contradicting myself, but hey, this here post was from April! Here is my full and final run-down of the best albums of 2009. And now back to the post you clicked on in the first place...

Welcome to the best album of 2009.

It's tempting to label Dan Deacon's Bromst as a coming-of-age masterpiece, using my best Wonder Years voice. But it's only his second UK album proper; he's barely in long trousers yet (see picture!).

I know it's only the beginning of April, but this is the best long player of the year. Here's why:

Bromst opens with Build Voice, which does what it says on the tin, and gives you the same swirling tingle you got in your loins at the start of Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavilion. I expected some toytown trickery and silliness, but this opener is reserved, considered, and, dare my pouting mouth whisper it, mature. Its melodic choir and hopscotch piano makes way for an extended fart: we're into the start of Red F and an energetic, almost frenetic speed pop track that loses none of the melody.

Are those chipmunks hidden in the chorus of Paddling Ghost? The playfulness is still here, raising a cub scout salute and making a goofy face, but like the wonderfully titled and beautifully epic Surprise Stefani, all the Timmy Mallett-ness is integrated into the songwriting.

So Deacon throws us wailing spirituals (Wet Wings), stuttering dog samples (Woof Woof), plus even more chipmunks only a lot, lot faster (Baltihorse), and we catch every single one of them because it all makes glorious sense.

If Flying Lotus hadn't already done it, Bromst has made me fall in love with electronica all over again. By the time we're at the xylophones and modem tones of closing Get Older, which in Max Tundra's hands would be endearingly comical, our heads are bursting with rhythm and colour and cacophonous bliss.

This is the sound of a musical genius having the absolute best time of his life. The streaming link I mentioned in this post a couple of weeks ago is no longer online, so try here instead.

Monthly mop-up: simmering Super Furries, dribbling confusion and net-loafing twazmuppets

Play with this cute flash synthesiser. Go on, have a play. Finished? Right then, stop faffing about and read my monthly mop-up for March.

What did I miss in March?

Probably quite a lot.  I should have mentioned Seeland, who are the blessed offspring of Broadcast (website graphic pictured) and Plone, and were tipped for great things in the second part of my 2009 preview back in January. Their music is bright, simple and gently experimental, like a simmering Super Furry Animals. Their debut album Tomorrow Today sounds like the 60s, the 70s and the 80s all at once.

I also ignored the Mark Pritchard single ? / The Hologram. It's his first release on brand spanking fresh Ho Hum label, and it's had some backing from Mary Ann Hobbs. ? is a dark drone that seems to momentarily peer at you from around the corner. The Hologram is a stolid slice of trip-hop that doesn't quite catch the spirituality of ?.

I also need to give you the latest goss on Luke Vibert.  The playground rave mentalist has stopped bathing in acid, and instead has lit up a massive doobie with some hip-hop inspired tracks - but that's for another post.

Can you recommend me some video action?

Yes. The massive, garguantuan, behemoth video superstar of March 2009 lived up to the hype. We've had mash-up vids before, but none has been as nose-breakingly effective as a collection of songs called Thru-You

Jerusalem-born Kutiman grabbed entirely unrelated snatches of other people's YouTube videos, cut them up, stretched them, sliced them, diced them and made love to them. The result is a collection of brilliant tracks that are so unlike their original source material, it renders all copyright arguments into a dribbling confusion. Watch the videos here.

And there was me thinking Radiohead on Mario Paint Composer would be the bestest video I saw this month.

Can I have an animal-themed link, please Mr Roland?

Grizzly Bear's impassioned plea, mentioned in my blog piece from a couple of weeks ago, reminded me of an interview the band did with Pitchfork last month in which Ed explained a shock Animal Collective leak and offered his thoughts on the death of the record buyer.  Read the short interview here. Album Veckatimest is out in two months.

What is a twazmuppet?

Tim Footman is a twazmuppet. Comment Is Free writer and Radiohead biographer Mr Footman had asked his Twitter friends to remind him to get on with some work and stop dabbling with social networking. It seemed like a sensible thing to do. So a few hours later, I messaged him:

"Get some shitting work done, you net-loafing twazmuppet."

'Twazmuppet' was a word I invented in my head months ago, but never had chance to use. So I yelled it at a poor defenceless author. Read Tim's reaction on his excellent blog here.

Tim Footman is anything but a twazmuppet. At least, I think he isn't. Can someone ring the OED to see if they've decided on a definition yet?

What's your favourite Warp track?

This is a question Warp Records are asking you, the general public. Go to their Warp 20 voting site and help celebrate the 20th birthday of the best record label of all time.